Theatre Reviews: The Fifth Step; Marriage Material
Sobriety, sisterhood, and too many subplots
A two-hander with a film star, and a family saga set in a corner shop. Two plays that left me wanting a bit more, just not for the same reasons.
The Fifth Step - @sohoplace
Written by David Ireland
Directed by Finn den Hertog
1 hour 30 minutes
There are few plays this year where so many people I know have been talking about booking tickets. Sadly, more people have talked about going than actually booked, thanks to high prices and even higher demand. Turns out casting Martin Freeman is a smart move if you want to sell tickets. The last time I had seen Freeman on-stage was in a revival of The Dumb Waiter opposite Danny Dyer - my first exposure to one of my favourite plays and an iconic double act.
On Tuesday evening I walked up through central London to see The Fifth Step. Thanks to my callous disregard for anyone else who wanted to go, I’d secured a cheap seat early in the run. Reviews for the original run in Scotland had been positive and the two-hander made the move to London with original cast member Jack Lowden, alongside newbie Martin Freeman. Playwright David Ireland was a wildcard to me; I adored Cyprus Avenue at the Royal Court in 2019 but was left baffled by the starry, empty Ulster American at Riverside Studios in 2023. Weighing all of this up I was optimistic for the evening ahead.
Over a tidy ninety minutes the play follows Luka (Lowden) as he tries to follow the Twelve Steps to sobriety with support from his sponsor James (Freeman). On a sparse stage the pair exchange banter, barbs, and eventually blows as we dip in and out of their conversations throughout Luka’s journey to recovery. The chemistry between the pair is electric, and the quickfire dialogue kept the audience in a steady state of hilarity from the start.
As the play progresses, the tone shifts awkwardly. Topics are raised, then dropped, and the audience - primed for laughter - didn’t always know how to respond. Awkward chuckles continued when the play decided to briefly tackle the subject of consent before declining to explore it in any real depth. That was my main issue with The Fifth Step - much as I was enjoying myself, I could not see what the play was trying to get at. Aside from a faith-based throughline it rarely picked up any of the threads it dropped along the way.
From my seat up by the roof I couldn’t help noticing the mechanics behind the play. Chairs are set out, folded away, then reappear alongside an endless stream of coffee cups. With such a minimal set all the fussing with the few props they had was distracting. Rather than watch James and Luka I was suddenly watching Martin Freeman collapsing a chair whilst Jack Lowden waited. Theatre relies on the suspension of disbelief and mine kept snapping back into place.
All that said - The Fifth Step is a very funny play. It might not be as deep as it wants to be, but if you embrace it as a simple comedy then you are in for a fun night at the theatre. Martin Freeman knows how to mine a script for every last laugh and is ably met by his younger counterpart. With a cast this strong I wanted a bit more depth beneath the banter.
If you are desperate to see The Fifth Step don’t let me put you off. You will have a good evening. Just not as good as seeing Danny Dyer in The Dumb Waiter, but few things are.
Seat: Second Balcony, B6 - £25
I love the cheap seats at @sohoplace. They are up on high stools but you can see 99% of the stage without having to lean. They may not be as cheap as the cheapest seats elsewhere but come with a lot less compromise.
Show: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Seat: ★★★★☆ (4/5)
The Fifth Step runs until 26th July 2025.
Marriage Material - Lyric Hammersmith
By Gurpreet Kaur Bhatti
Based on the novel by Sathnam Sanghera
Directed by Iqbal Khan
2 hours 35 minutes
By Saturday, London had become entirely too hot so I was grateful to hide away at the Lyric Hammersmith for a lengthy matinee performance of Marriage Material. Adapted from the novel by Sathnam Sanghera, the play follows multiple generations of the Bains family as they run a corner shop in Wolverhampton from the 1980s to present day. I had not read the book so was going in cold but as a Coventry kid was excited to see some West Midlands representation on a London stage.
At the start of the performance the stage was dominated by a lifesize facade of a corner shop, and a small coconut. Two young sisters rushed out and prised open the coconut - with that the corner shop unfolded and the story of the Bains began. From there we spent the majority of the play in the residence behind the shop as over decades the Bains tackle racism, infidelity, religion, death, love, protest, family, and belonging. As that long list might suggest, Marriage Material struggles to find its focus too.
In the first half of the play I was really struggling. With eight actors playing multiple roles, decades of plot to get through, and dozens of themes to unpack, I found the show oddly lifeless. The cast often felt adrift in the space, the accents weren’t always convincing, and plot points were rushed through in favour of less interesting scenes. Perhaps it’s a side effect of staying too close to the source material?
A post-interval time jump brought the play into focus. After a lot of distractions we were finally focussing in on the relationship between those two sisters from the start, and the result was a much more rewarding second half. Anoushka Deshmukh and Kiran Landa as Surinder and Kamaljit brought life and vitality to the stilted production and rescued it from a meandering start. Landa, in particular, seemed to relish playing the older version of Kamaljit with a quick wit and a sharp tongue, while Deshmukh portrayed a woman with a backstory she wasn’t willing to divulge. Combined their spiky back and forth breathed life back into the play.
I can see why Marriage Material tries to cover so much ground. This is the story of a family and the way one generation shapes the next. The sheer breadth of the ground it is trying to cover ultimately works against it as uninteresting side-plots are given equal weight to the core moments that make the play succeed. I longed for more time with the sisters, and less time with one of their sons going to an awkwardly staged nightclub.
Marriage Material is a play with a lot of heart, and it got me to the edge of tears by the end. I just wish we’d taken fewer detours to get there.
Seat: Stalls, H2 - £15
The cheap seats at the Lyric are unbeatable. If I had to nitpick, I would say sitting this close to the aisle put me slightly too near to the speakers but those occasional needle-drop-jump-scares kept me awake in the slow bits.
Show: ★★★☆☆ (3/5)
Seat: ★★★★★ (5/5)
Marriage Material runs until 21st June 2025.
Stools? Absolutely not.